advanced air ability or aam is nasa's vision to integrate new forms of transportation
into our existing airspace system in a safe and accessible manner these new vehicle configurations
that are coming online enable people and cargo to be transported in new ways one area the nasa
team is researching is infrastructure when we typically think of infrastructure we think of
roads and highways now take that concept and apply it to the air above us you can imagine these new
vehicles traversing across a network of routes in which these routes would enable or allow landing
at vertiports that may be located at airports but they also may be located in our city centers aem
research and infrastructure includes both physical infrastructure as well as digital infrastructure
and what we're attempting to research are not only what are the new areas of infrastructure that need
to be built to enable this aam ecosystem but also how existing infrastructure needs to evolve to
support these new vehicle configurations coming online in regards to physical infrastructure we
are trying to understand the virtaport surface that is being developed to enable safe landing
of these vehicles and on the digital side we're working to understand what are the digital
communication networks that are required to enable communication between vehicles and airspace
services that are coming online the nasa team is conducting tests with an aam represented vehicle
such as a helicopter in order to understand how that vehicle could land at a prototype vertiport
the next phase of infrastructure research involves working with vehicle partners that have electric
vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that are capable of interacting with some of the
prototype surfaces that we have developed in addition we're conducting simulations to
understand the digital information that would be required to be sent between these providers
so in order for aam to become a reality the infrastructure components both physical and
digital really need to develop and exist to enable this industry to come to life